Day 25

 
 

My last day without Mike.
Gave a presentation this morning to the residents at Hospital Japones about our program and inviting them to visit...one of the medical students may come. She speaks English with a Texas accent, from living there for a year and I think it is great. Then I had a delicious lunch at Dr Jordans house with his family. His whole family lives in the house, his two daughters, their spouses, his grandaughter, his mother, his wife and his son. It would be awesome to all live together like that, but I think that I would prefer to all live on the same street. He also has two dogs, one which is a tan cockerspaniel...I really missed Cassie today.
In the afternoon, Raquels mother (and father as our driver through the insane Santa Cruz traffic) took me to see Hospital/Clinic Nino Jesus number 1 and number 2. They are beautiful modern medicine buildings with airconditioning and private rooms. They even have a VIP section where your room has a plasma TV and minifridge and private airconditioning. If I am ever sick in Bolivia, I'm definitely going VIP.
When we were touring the first hospital on of the nurses, who didn't know Raquels mother asked her where in the hospital she worked and I'm pretty sure her response was, I don't work here, I made this hospital, which is a line I would love to use one day (let me set the image, Raquels mom is probably under 5 feet and always has the sweetest, biggest smile on her face, she is animated when she talks, and you can feel the earned respect radiating off her in the way people interact with her). As she showed me on the plaque outside the second hospital, she helped found these hospitals. In the second hospital, people literally came out of their offices to greet her. She says that when Raquel was here she was also very well regarded. (Raquel, correct me if I'm wrong about any of this sometimes I miss something critical in Spanish and my whole understanding goes out the window).
In summary, Raquels mother is wicked awesome! (I have other words to express how cool she is, but for some reason all of them have cuss words involved...I guess when you are really cool you earn a title that can't be typed or used around small children).
Now is the waiting for Mike to arrive. He is somewhere between Dallas and Miami right now.
If I don't post again it is for lack of time and internet, but we will try to put something up now and then when we have internet access...I know that at least our hotel in Miami has free internet (it's pretty fancy) so if nothing from now until then, we will be back March third.